9.27.2013

In Favor of Childhood Vaccines...HuffPo

I'm Coming Out... as Pro-Vaccine

Posted: 09/24/2013 2:35 pm

I know. Some mom coming out in favor of vaccines shouldn't be
breaking news. There's nothing edgy about siding with most parents,
nearly all the world's governments and the vast majority of medical
researchers and practitioners. But more of us need to do it.When I see debates about vaccines online -- and as someone who writes
about parenting culture I see a lot -- I used to pat myself on the back
for not getting mixed up in the fray. I mean, what's it to me what
other people do with their kids? I'm secure in my own choices. Besides,
even if I wanted to change the minds of anti-vaccine advocates, how
could I? I have two reasons for rethinking my silence: Jack and Clio.
I came to know both children through their mothers' blogs and have been
following along with their diagnosis and treatment for leukemia. Their
illnesses prevent them from receiving live vaccines such as the MMR
(measles, mumps and rubella) shot. Some kids get diagnosed before they
have a chance to receive all of their vaccines, but even kids who were
vaccinated, as Jack and Clio were, remain vulnerable to contagious
diseases because of their compromised immune systems. The idea that they
could be exposed to a vaccine-preventable disease while they are
enduring treatment is troubling. You might be thinking, "No worries, because those kids are protected
by herd immunity." Well, so many parents are foregoing vaccines now,
quite often in progressive communities like the ones in which Jack and
Clio live, that herd immunity is threatened. In California, where I
live, there is a database
of vaccine rates listed by school. There are pockets where the vaccine
rates are dipping below 50 percent. For herd immunity to be effective,
vaccination rates need to be at least in the ballpark of 80 percent. There seems to be two main types of parents who are skipping routine
immunization for their healthy children: the ultra-crunchy and the
ultra-conservative (plus a third group that I'll address later). The two
camps of "ultras" might not seem to have a lot in common, but they're
buying their doomsday rations from the same catalog, if you catch my
drift. Both groups often have intense distrust of modern medicine and
the government. (And not for nothing, as it often feels like the United
States government is actively searching for ways to intensify the
paranoia of its citizens. I mean, WTH with that NSA stuff?) However, while there is nothing more "natural" than large numbers of
children dying in a Malthusian cesspool of unchecked contagious disease,
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we should avoid that. This
shouldn't be a controversial opinion. The increasing success of the
anti-vaccine movement is endangering not only immune-compromised
children such as Jack and Clio, but also infants too young to be
vaccinated. To say nothing of the unvaccinated children themselves.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jj-keith/vaccines_b_3829948.html